I invite you to take a look at BWB Solutions and Cause & Effect's recently distributed study on the impact on nonprofit board practices. Here's the conclusion and summary:
Conclusions
Our survey responses aligned with past research which showed that nonprofit boards become more engaged during a crisis.2
Five months into the pandemic, responding boards are largely adapting well to the new online meeting environment. Half of respondents reported no change in meeting frequency, attendance, meeting preparation, meeting participation or board giving or getting. Yet large minorities, up to a third of respondents, did report a little to a lot of improvement in these areas.
Under the pressure of COVID response, or possibly thanks to the nature of online meetings, almost half of responding boards have seen improvements in their understanding of organizational finances and operations, teamwork, disciplined use of time and elevated importance of board discussions. It’s possible that some of these gains came at the expense of the board’s attention to strategic planning and fundraising which were the board and board member activities most likely to be paused.
COVID restrictions and related challenges in many dimensions will affect us all for the balance of the year. We’ll continue to follow how the boards we serve professionally and those we serve on as volunteers adapt and change.
Our closing recommendation: Take time to reflect, question all assumptions and start planning for the next disruption
Like the fish who never mentions the water when asked to describe its environment, the pandemic exposed the danger in rarely questioning our core operating assumptions.
As organization development and governance consultants, we believe and promote the power of reflection, strategic thinking and intentional action. Within the realm of governance, we recommend that boards and CEOs/Executive Directors set aside time for two separate dialogues, one focused on board practices and the other on core organizational assumptions.
Under the heading of board practices, here are a few questions to get you started:
- What would define excellence for your board? Given that as the benchmark
- What worked better in the new environment? Why? What would you need to do to hold onto that practice?
- What didn’t work that you’d like to change? How?
2 “Is governing board behavior cyclical?” Miriam Wood, Nonprofit Management and Leadership. Winter 1992. And “Here we go again, the cyclical nature of board behavior.” Julia Claussen. Nonprofit Quarterly. May 2018.
- What else would improve the way your board functions?
In the area of challenging core organization assumptions, you’ll find much written in the past and present about scenario planning. But few of those processes envisioned confronting the unprecedented, widespread disruption in all of our lives, both personal and organizational.
So we encourage your organization to engage in brutally honest questioning through
disruption planning.
At the center of disruption planning is the skill and courage to honestly challenge everything a nonprofit takes for granted about the way it operates. With open thinking, you’ll likely find opportunities to move forward from disruption that you hadn’t considered before.
You might consider questions like these if you haven’t already discussed them:
- What are the three or four most critical assumptions on which our programs, finances and operations rely?
- If those critical assumptions did not prove true, what would cause the biggest disruptions to our current way of being?
- What can we put in place now to avoid, mitigate or adapt to potential disruptions?
Common sense and prudence are generally recognized standards for a board to fulfill its basic fiduciary duty. But before the next disruption shakes your reality, it’s time for bold questioningand thinking, what has been labeled generative conversation3.
To contact the authors:
Mike Burns, BWB Solutions (www.bwbsolutions.com): mikeb@bwbsolutions.com
Gayle L. Gifford & Jon Howard, Cause & Effect, Inc. (ceffect.com) gayle@ceffect.com jon@ceffect.com